Upgrade
by Haleine Delail
Summary: Sequel to WHAT WAS LEFT UNSAID.  Buffy's on her way to LA to tell Angel she found out there's no perfect happiness clause in his curse.  But the folks at Wolfram and Hart have something in store for our heroes that will ruin all their best laid plans.
1. Randy the IT Guy

_BECAUSE OF POPULAR DEMAND, THIS IS THE SEQUEL TO "WHAT WAS LEFT UNSAID," BY THE SAME AUTHOR, WHICH IS LISTED WITH STORIES FROM "BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER." IT TAKES PLACE SOMETIME IN EARLY SEASON 1 OF __ANGEL__, BEFORE WOLFRAM AND HART REALLY PUMP UP THE VOLUME ON TRYING TO DRIVE ANGEL TO THE DARK SIDE. I FIGURE THAT THIS COULD HAVE BEEN THEIR FIRST ATTEMPT._

**Randy the I.T. guy**

"Who is this guy, and why are we trying so hard to annoy him?" asked Deanna Everweather.

"His name is Angel," Lindsey McDonald answered, without taking his eyes off the giant metal cyllinder in the middle of the room. "He's a vampire with a soul. He's supposedly a major player in the coming apocalypse, whatever that means. We're trying to make sure that he winds up on our side."

"Isn't a vampire _supposed_ to fight on the side of evil?"

"That's why I was so careful to mention that he has a soul," Lindsey said hotly, looking sideways at his new charge. "A soul means a conscience, and a conscience means no killing, and no killing means... that he's a major pain in our ass. He's a do-gooder, and a mighty powerful one at that."

"How did he get a soul?"

He looked at her straight-on this time, noting again the poor quality of her lavendar suit. Lindsey was starting to get more than a little annoyed with the new intern. For the eightieth time that day, he wondered what on earth he had done wrong to make Holland Manners choose _him_ to take charge of Everweather, and show her the ropes. The little upstart knew all about the law, almost as if it mattered, but knew squat about the occult. Her "I'm willing to learn" vibe was making Lindsey crazy, and she wasn't even hot.

Nevertheless, Lindsey answered her question. "Gypsy curse. He killed one of their charmed daughters, and the elders cursed him with a conscience."

"Well, that's a pretty clever punishment," Deanna marveled.

"Yes, I suppose it is," Lindsey agreed, more humoring the young woman than actually assenting to her assertion.

She turned her attention to the metal cyllinder. It was wide enough around that four grown men could _maybe_ link hands around it, and about eight feet tall. There was an arc-shaped doorway near the floor in its side. A man was lying on the floor with his head inside the cyllinder, legs sticking out. He was wearing a dark purple robe, so dark it was almost black, and his feet were bare. Deanna could hear chanting.

"What's he doing in there?" she asked, whispering.

"He's upgrading," Lindsey whispered back.

"Oh, is he like the I.T. guy?"

"Sort of," Lindsey answered, acknowledging to himself that this was a pretty good analogy for it. "You see, since the lawyers at Wolfram and Hart are lawyers, not wizards, if we're going to wield magick, we have to have some reserves, some source to pull from. It's like the terminal computer at the center of a network that stores all of the information and allows all the computers in the network to function as they do."

"And this big metal thing is the magick terminal?"

"Yeah, basically. And Randlu-Wathric here, with the chanting, is adding a new power to our reserves. It's something that we are in great hopes will bring Angel into the fold, as it were."

"How does it work?" Deanna wanted to know.

Suddenly, the chanting stopped. The robed man pushed himself awkwardly out of the small doorway and stood up. His reddish, burned-looking demon face morphed into something seemingly human, which reminded Deanna of Chandler from _Friends_, only fat and bald. He pulled off his dark purple cloak to reveal a pair of chili-stained overalls underneath, and a nametag that said "Randy."

"I think we've got 'er done, Mr. McDonald," he said, wiping sweat off his forehead, and stuffing his cloak into a duffel bag. After that, he began pulling on orthopedic shoes.

"Thanks Randy, we couldn't do it without you," Lindsey said, smiling fakely and patting Randy on the back.

"Well, you couldn't do it _right _without me," Randy said, laughing roughly. "Anyway, just give her about twenty-four hours to charge up, then you can let 'er rip whenever you're ready."

"Great. Thanks."

Randy shook hands with Lindsey and Deanna, and then left the room.

"So," Deanna said, not forgetting her previous question. "How does it work?"

"The new power allows us to change spells already in existence, without breaking the spell. So, if you conjure a tunafish on rye, and then decide that you wanted wheat, you can do that without vanquishing the entire sandwich."

"Oh I see," the intern said, catching on quickly. "So you're going to _change _the spell that was put on Angel, without having to lift the curse."

"Exactly."


	2. Meanwhile, Back In Sunnydale

**Meanwhile, Back in Sunnydale**

"Buffy, if I'm right," Giles was saying, "And this is _if_... it means that the clause that robs Angel of his soul when he experiences perfect happiness does not apply anymore. Willow performed the incantation as it appeared on the transliteration that Jenny's computer program produced, and the, er, loophole, as it were, was simply missing. All I can think is that she had not finished with the programming, or what-have-you, had not gotten to this part of the text before she was killed, and we simply overlooked..."

Giles continued to speak, but Buffy heard nothing.

She was numb. This was not the thing she most wanted in the world, but it might have been a close second. To be free to love Angel the way they both deserved, even if it still meant that he was immortal and she was not, it was like stumbling upon a pot of gold at the end of a very black, vermin-infested rainbow. They would still have to deal with her growing old and his inevitable enduring youth, the major risks involved in him being a Champion and her being a Slayer, the distance between them, the 230-year age gap, and his endless guilt and quest for redemption, but the biggest roadblock seemed to be gone. Right now, that one moment of happiness, to Buffy, was worth all the rest of the unavoidable debris.

"Remember Buffy," she heard Giles warn, as Angel had the year before. "Sometimes the very that seems to be a great gift can turn out to be a curse in and of itself."

She grabbed her coat and purse.

"Where are you going?" Xander asked, as if he didn't already know.

"To L.A. I'm going to find a little perfect happiness."

The door slammed shut, and all at once, it was as if Buffy had left the room days ago. They could all feel the tension, they all felt it wasn't right, but who was going to try to stop her now?

"Um, is she really just going to go, you know... jump the bones of a volatile killer on the basis of a rough translation of a text of lost magicks transliterated by a dead woman's computer?" Xander asked, breaking the inevitable silence. He developed a shocked look on his face immediately after, as if to say 'whoa, I can't believe I just said all that.'

Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them. "Y-yes, it appears so."

"Giles, we've gotta stop her," Willow said, hesitantly. "Don't we? I mean, if we're wrong about something..."

"Don't worry," the Watcher replied, staring at nothing in particular. "If I know Angel, he'll be far more cautious than to go off half-cocked..."

Everyone stared at him.

"All right, bad choice of words. He'll be cautious is all. I don't for a moment think that he will agree just to jump in bed with Buffy the moment she tells him what we found here. God knows, he's got first-hand knowledge of the unpredictability of these things, not to mention the fact that he's been around for two hundred and forty years."

"Still, don't you think we at least owe him a phone call, let him know she's coming?" Willow asked. "Explain how we came by the information so that he can make a wise call when the time comes?"

"And spoil the surprise?" Anya asked, genuinely appalled. "How would you feel if you'd gone off to your long-lost love to tell him all your dreams had come true, only to find that someone called him and told him already?"

Sickened at the thought of her own lost love and impossible dreams of not turning evil, Willow shuddered. And unbeknownst to Anya, a few tears found their way to the fronts of Willow's eyes, but she blinked them back. Still, she was forced grudgingly to agree with Anya.

Xander summed up the situation, "Well, I guess we just hope for the best now."

"We trust Buffy and Angel to make the right decisions," Willow said shakily, though not overly reassured.

Everyone exhaled all at once.


	3. Clause & Effect

**Clause and Effect**

Cordelia's daily morning haranguing was really counterproductive, why couldn't she see that?

Angel wondered this _again_ as she lectured him on the virtues of human contact, and the necessity of being among the living in order to do his job effectively. She never seemed to understand that the more she and Doyle lectured him, the less it made him want to go mingle. He just wasn't a people person these days, and was fairly convinced that he could live quite comfortably this way for the next century or so, so why couldn't they both just leave him alone?

As Cordelia shrieked and Angel and Doyle sat by, watching her and sipping coffee, Angel felt a pemonitory sensation. He could sense something – danger, perhaps? As the feeling got stronger, he ruled out danger, and decided upon pleasure. He focused on the tingling sensation in the pit of his stomach that wasn't quite hunger, and wasn't quite libido. It was a mystical awareness, something drawing near to bring good, to bring peace...

All of this ran through his head in the three seconds it took for Buffy to enter the building, find Angel's office and open the door. All eyes went to her, and even Cordelia's oratory stopped dead in its tracks.

"Hi," Angel said, so overwhelmed that words failed him.

"Hi," she said back, knowing she sounded lame, but she was equally tongue-tied. Her insides were boiling and tied in knots, and all she wanted to do was explode from excitement and rain kisses all over Angel's body and face.

Fortunately, she was able to control herself, and the two of them just stared at each other for several long moments, before Angel finally invited her inside.

"Buffy! How are you?" shreiked Cordelia, coming in for a hug. It was a big morning for Cordelia and shreiking.

"I'm good, Cordy," Buffy answered with a genuine smile. "Great, actually. So how's the acting going?"

"Oh, um, I'm, you know... between things right now," she said with an uneasy laugh. "In the meantime, I'm a supersleuth for Angel, and I try not to put stress on my cuticles."

Doyle stepped forward and introduced himself, and shaking Buffy's hand, said, "And you must be the famous Buffy Summers. I've heard a lot about you. Seen you, as well!"

"Doyle's the one withthe visions. He saw you in trouble which is why I came..." Angel explained, trailing off, realizing his mistake.

"Yeah," Buffy said, showing some irritation. "We are going to have to discuss your showing up in my town to 'help' me, and not even telling me you were there."

"Told you that was a bad idea," Cordy whispered to Angel indiscreetly.

"But not right now," Buffy continued, ignoring Cordelia's remark. She addressed Cordelia nevertheless, as well as Doyle. "Guys, do you mind if I talk to Angel alone?"

Cordelia and Doyle were a little surprised, but when they looked at their boss, he nodded slightly. They both muttered about how they were just leaving, and they exited the office through the front door.

For an agonizingly long moment, Angel and Buffy simply stared. Again. They were ecstatic to be in each other's presence, but were restraining for the usual reasons. Well, _almost_ the usual reasons.

"So," Angel breached finally. "What's up?"

"I need to tell you something. I think we should sit."

Angel was concerned, not that it showed on his face. He ushered her into his office and shut the door. They both took seats on the clients' side of the desk, and again, a silence hung in the air for quite some time before anyone spoke.

"Are you going to tell me?" Angel asked, without any impatience or frustration betrayed in his voice.

"Yeah."

Buffy took a deep breath, contemplating how to begin in a way that didn't sound spazzy or insane.

She began slowly, haltingly, speaking softly and avoiding Angel's eyes, though she wasn't sure why. "We all did some research, Giles and... the gang. And we found something."

"Okay," Angel said, a probing look on his face.

"Willow noticed that... something wasn't right with the curse she used on you, to give you your soul the second time. Something was missing," she explained. At the mention of his soul, her voice went a little hoarse.

"Missing?"

"Yes. The diskette... the one that Miss Calendar used to store the information has been sitting in a box on Willow's desk all this time, and... when she pulled it out the other day, she found that the original Romanian incantation file and the English translation were different sizes."

"Different _sizes?_"

"Yeah, it's a computer thing. It means that one text was longer than the other, and I think by quite a lot. Anyway, we figured out that something was missing. There was something in the original curse that didn't make it into the new curse."

"Mm-hm."

"We looked up gypsy symbolism, and Xander did some reading on Romanian etymology... and we think..." she stopped, the emotion choking her words.

"You think what?" Angel asked, again, without any irritation showing through.

"We think that the perfect happiness clause is... not there."

"Excuse me?"

"We did some translating of our own, and we think the part that got left out was the part that says you lose your soul if you experience perfect happiness."

Angel didn't say anything for a long time. He shifted in his chair. He looked at Buffy, then looked away. He opened his mouth several times, but did not speak. He exhaled with gusto, he blinked his eyes pointedly, he smiled and chuckled a few times, but no words were forthcoming. At last, he managed to say, "Well... that's good."

Without mirth, Buffy said, "Yes, I think so."

That afternoon saw Buffy try to explain to Angel twice more what she had initially said, as he hadn't been sure that he'd been hearing properly. He also quizzed her, wanting to make damn sure that it was Buffy he was talking to, and not some shape-shifting demon.

It also saw the two of them trying to explain it all to Cordy and Doyle, and involved in a very long conference call with Giles, Willow and Xander. The Scoobies back in Sunnydale tried to explain how they had come to the shaky conclusion that Angel was clause-free. Angel and Giles had some intense, deep, discussion over Bohemian symbology and its evolution over the years, which went right over everyone's head. In the end, Angel was reasonably satisfied that he was free of the wretched loophole that kept him in constant misery.

After the confab had ended, Giles asked Buffy to pick up the receiver so that he could speak to her privately.

Before he had the chance to say anything, she said, "Look Giles, I know you think this is all a very thinly-veiled excuse for me to sleep with Angel, but it's not."

"I know that, Buffy."

"What?" She was shocked. She had been sure that he was going to lecture her on taking rash actions and being responsible for the weight of the world, or something.

"A few hours ago, yes, that's what I would have said," Giles explained gently. "But I've changed my mind. Yes, our researches have not been perfect, yes, we're dealing with translations that can't entirely be trusted, but when are circumstances ever perfect? We don't have access to a higher plane of information, an all-knowing entity that can see what is and what has passed. We have to live the best we can with the information we have, Buffy, and that means taking chances sometimes in order to find a little bit of joy."

"Wow," she said. "That's just what I was thinking about on the bus all the way out here. I was rehearsing how I was going to say it to _you_!"

"I'll support you and trust you in whatever decision you make regarding Angel," he said. "Just be on your guard. You know what can happen."

"Thanks, Giles," she said, and hung up.

Fleetingly, she marveled at the fact that what had just transpired on the phone amounted to Giles giving his blessing for her to have sex. Pseudo-parentally-sanctioned sex was kind of creepy. Luckily, she didn't dwell on it too long.


	4. Banzai & Salut

**Banzai and Salut**

Buffy and Angel stood at the foot of his bed facing each other. She smiled sheepishly. She positively sparkled in the dim light, and had rarely, if ever, looked more beautiful.

"Are you ready?" Angel asked, touching her shoulder tenderly.

Her sheepish grin turned to one of seduction. "Don't I look ready?"

"You look amazing," he told her, moving closer and touching his lips to hers.

Their kiss was electric, the first since her arrival in town that morning. After the revelation about the curse, Buffy had decided to go shopping. Angel had found this odd, but he didn't try to argue. Cordelia had tried to explain to him that a woman's relationship with shopping was something not to be trifled with, something unbreakable and inexplicable.

So interefere he did not. He just figured that Buffy needed to time to process the information, to think about what it meant for their odd vampire/Slayer dynamic, and shopping was just an excuse to get away for a few hours. Though when she returned, she _was_ carrying a shiny black bag from a place called Yukiko's. He asked her what they sold there, and she said, "Japanese stuff." Then she and the bag disappeared downstairs so she could change clothes.

The kiss left them both breathless. They pulled away from each other reluctantly, and in a way that made Angel want to beg Buffy to bag the idea of dinner and a movie. He wanted to take advantage of his clause-free curse _right now_. He wanted to take advantage like bunnies, and preferably with the lights on. Possibly on the kitchen floor.

But she had used the phrase "real date" about five hundred times that afternoon and he had to keep reminding himself that in spite of her strength and smarts and all the junk she'd been through, she was still only nineteen. He knew that she wanted the long, romantic, pressure-free evening that they had never had together. He had suggested "dinner and a movie" himself, that being the only "real date" fodder he had in his repertoire, and she had agreed. While she was out shopping, he'd made plans: a reasonably expensive meal with proper romantic lighting and music, the lame chick-flick of her choice, a long walk home, followed by some earth-shattering, but non-apocalyptic, sex that would keep both of them indoors for most of the following day's sunlit hours.

. As a matter of practicality, since looking in the mirror did him no good, he had meant to ask her how he looked. Cordelia had recently goaded him into buying a black Armani suit expressly for meeting with well-to-do potential clients, and he had never worn it before now. He _felt _spiffy in it, coupled with a crisp white dress shirt and silk tie, but he simply didn't know, and didn't own a Polaroid. But when he took a step back and regarded Buffy, all coherent thought left his mind. He looked at her from head to toe. She was wearing a fitted emerald green satin dress with spaghetti straps, and Japanese kanji lettering patterning the fabric in black. Her black lacquered _zori _platform sandals accentuated her long, lean ankles. Her hair was piled in a bun in the back of her head, held in place by two black chopsticks with charms on the ends.

Her radiant, California good-looks coupled with the dramatic Japanese overtones turned more than a few heads throughout the restaurant that Angel had chosen, as they were escorted to their table. The venue was _Ryukona Luxe, _a trendy, elegant Japanese-French fusion restaurant which was exceedingly difficult to get into.

"I decided to take the Japanese theme and run with it," he whispered to her as they settled in their seats.

She smiled. "Very appropriate, and thoughtful. And the French is appropriate too," she said cheerfully, lifting the menu over her face to hide the giddiness in her expression.

"How?"

"Good e-vu-ning," the waiter said to them, in his Japanese-tinged English. Then, he switched to Japanese-tinged French. _"Bienvenue à Ryukona Luxe._ I am Toshio, your waiter. May I bring you a Sake with Chambord, or a Genmai-cha with Grey Goose and fresh blueberries, perhaps?

"Just some champagne," Angel said.

"Very good," Toshio said, scurrying away.

"Angel," Buffy asked. "This place is a dream. How did you manage to get in on such short notice?"

"I saved the owner from a Tanafirroh demon about a month ago," he answered. "He's been putting off paying the bill."

When the champagne arrived, they toasted their good fortune. They made a pact to buy something nice for Willow before Buffy returned to Sunnydale, and Angel asked Buffy which movie she'd like to see.

"I don't know if there's anything out _right now_ that I'm interested in," she said. "I think a little blast from the past might be in order."

"You mean you want to rent something? That's cool. We can stop on the way back if you want to."

"I'm not sure that I'm in the mood for anything they have at the video stores either," she replied, evasively sipping champagne. She avoided Angel's quizzical gaze in an exaggerated roll of the eyes toward the ceiling.

Angel was vexed, but he wasn't going to push. He had no idea at this point what she wanted or what she was getting at, let alone why she was being so cryptic about it, but this was not the time. Everything would happen in its way.

Buffy's dinner consisted of tuna sashimi with a Morel mushroom and Wasabi cream sauce, alongside _haricots verts_ sautéed in honey-dijon miso sauce and served over white rice. It was possibly the strangest meal she had ever eaten, and she basically couldn't identify anything that she was putting in her mouth, but it was tasty. Even better was the company. Even though Angel ordered only a gratuitous green salad with their special Camembert-daikkon dressing, she was having the time of her life. Just to be here, in a swanky restaurant enjoying rich food and desirous gazes with the love of her very short life, knowing that later the desirous gazes could (and would) turn to desirous kisses and eventually desirous sweaty nakedness... it was nothing short of magic.

Toshio refilled their champagne glasses as he took their plates away. A few moments later, he slyly left a dessert menu on their table, without saying a word. Buffy snatched it up and began to study it. When the waiter returned, she ordered a chocolate mousse with miniature Manju balls, as well as Fuji apples baked in Chardonnay and ginger root. To go.

"To go?" Toshio asked, as he committed her order to memory.

"Yes, please. I'd like to take them with us, if that's all right."

After a pause, Toshio glanced at Angel. Both men shrugged and the waiter assented. Fifteen minutes later, Angel and Buffy left the restaurant happy, each with a dessert in-hand.

"Snacks for the movie?" Angel asked.

"Something like that," Buffy answered.

**Hope you enjoyed this completely silly chapter - I promise, it will start getting juicy soon.**

**Also, I hate to use one story as a forum to whore another, but check out "Daughters: A Tale of Conventional Wisdom" and see what you think. I've got almost no reviews for it!**


	5. The Plan Stalls

**The Plan Stalls**

"What?" Lindsey asked, incredulously as he sipped a fine whiskey. His sudden outburst into his cell phone made some of the other tavern patrons turn and stare. "Are you absolutely sure?"

Deanna was in the ladies' room at Ryukona Luxe, leaning against the sink and staring at a wrinkled surveillance photograph of Buffy Summers. "Oh I'm sure, Lindsey. It's her all right. They've been sitting at that table for an hour and a half gazing longingly at each other and making mooney eyes. It's so gross."

"Wow," Lindsey half-chuckled, half-sighed, "Slayer's in town. Wouldn't you know it. Just when we make our upgrade."

"And get this," Deanna continued as if she hadn't heard. "She was here in the bathroom just a minute ago, and I strongly suspect that she sprayed perfume up her skirt."

There was a pause while Lindsey waited for Deanna to explain the innane comment, but she did not.

Annoyed, he asked, "How do you know that, and what the hell has it got to do with anything?"

"I watched her feet while she was in the stall," she explained. "I saw her prop her foot on the toilet seat and then I heard a spritz. Then I smelled the perfume. A girl only does that if she planning on... _taking a guy home_, if you know what I mean."

"Why did you watch her feet?" Lindsey asked, incredulous again.

"Because you never know what you might find, I figured," she said jubilantly. "And hey! I was right. They're definitely planning on doing the horizontal mambo tonight."

Again, Lindsey fell silent. None of it made any sense. From what he knew of the vampire, Angel was in L.A. specifically to avoid being around Buffy Summers because their passion was combustible enough to turn Angel into a vicious killer. But now she was in L.A., and they were sitting in candlelit restaurant drooling all over each other and, if Deanna was correct, getting ready to get pelvic once more. Angel couldn't know about the upgrade, so why would he take a chance like this with the one girl who could give him true happiness?

"Lindsey?" Deanna asked, after he'd been silent for an uncomfortable amount of time.

"Yeah?" he said, snapping temporarily out of his train of thought.

"When are you going to tell me what this is all about?" Deanna asked.

Without answering, he hit 'end' on his cell phone.

"What news?" Holland Manners asked from the barstool next to him. The mild-tempered, yet unspeakably evil senior attorney was sipping nothing stronger than a diet Sprite. His malevolence was amplified by the fact that he was completely and utterly human, possessed of a soul and conscience, and yet _chose _to wield death and mayhem whenever and wherever he could, and did so with a smile on his face.

"Buffy Summers is in Los Angeles, did I hear that right?"

"You did, sir," Lindsey said, tucking his phone into his breast pocket. "Deanna has been observing them all night. She says they're getting pretty cozy."

"Uh-huh," Holland said, evenly. "And the upgrade, did it go through today?"

"I had it cast today, but Randy said it would be about twenty-four hours before it kicked in."

"Cutting it kind of close, aren't we?"

"Yes sir, but I trust Randy's estimation. He's never failed us before. If all goes as it's going now, the upgrade will not have had time to fully load by the time Angel and the Slayer... consummate tonight."

"Why did we not have the Slayer watched before we ordered the upgrade? Perhaps we could have known she was on her way, and we could have saved the firm the four hundred thousand dollars that Randlu-Wathric and his brethren charge for their services."

"Even if we had, we could not have forseen that Angel would risk a romantic liaison with her. Based on his track record..."

"Lindsey, you were hired because of your ability to forsee what other people cannot. I'm not expecting you to be psychic, just a little more forward-thinking."

Lindsey was used by now to being complimented and admonished simultaneously. Usually, it was followed by a threat. He played the part of the remorseful employee and apologized respectfully, answered by a soft, sympathetic, almost fatherly smile from Holland.

After a beat, Holland sighed. "Well, on the up-side, we don't have much to lose at this point. If they screw tonight and the upgrade hasn't gone through, he'll lose his soul, and we'll have won. If it _has _gone through, we still have the upgrade to work with, and he'll have gotten properly laid for the first time in a century. Everyone wins!" He smiled brightly and slapped Lindsey on the back in a gesture of cameraderie.

Lindsey smiled weakly, downed his whiskey and did not try to say anything more. He made a mental note to call Lucy Lira in the morning, the aura reader. She'd be able to tell him definitively whether Angel had lost his soul, and then he'd know how to proceed. Still, he had an uneasy feeling about all of this. Why would Angel, the valiant Champion of the Powers That Be take a chance like this?


	6. A Feast For the Eyes

**Please forgive the gratuitousness of the second half of this chapter. I felt Angel and Buffy's Big Night Out, and Buffy's cryptic romantic plans, deserved a bit of catharsis. But then, don't we all? For a precedent on the kimono and the food, please see the _Buffy_ episode "Enemies" from season 3.**

**A Feast For the Eyes**

Deanna figured she'd give the lovers a bit of time. Whatever it was that they were going to do tonight, she was pretty sure she didn't want to watch. Did vampires have regular sex anyway, or would there have to be some kind of exchange of plasma in order for Angel to "achieve happiness?" Or was it the Slayer who was deviant, needing to pummel her lover about the head and neck in order to feel dominant? In any case, Deanna Everweather was a lot of things, but a voyeur was not one of them. She figured she'd spend the night doing some research and try to figure out what Lindsey and the wacky gang at Wolfram & Hart were up to. Spying on Angel and Buffy could wait until the sun came up and they were finished doing... well, each other.

Lucy Lira, on the other hand, was not quite so tactful. Not only was she an excellent aura reader, but she was also a highly skilled psychic. She could, if she concentrated, channel the emotions and hear the thoughts of anyone she had touched. Sometimes she didn't have to concentrate; if the feeling or thought was intense enough, it would come to her of its own volition. She loved the power of invading people's private thoughts, and the deliciousness of knowing what they were thinking and feeling, even when their faces betrayed nothing. Wolfram & Hart had been her best clients through the years, hiring her not only to read auras, but also to accidentally bump into someone, touch them somehow, and then predict their movements. She'd paid for her condo in Brentwood working for them when they were trying to procure highly unscrupulous attorneys from other firms and bring them into their dark fold.

The last time she'd gotten a call from Wolfram & Hart, it was a few months ago. Lindsey McDonald had attempted to hire her just after his first encounter with the vampire Angel. Angel had thrown Russell Winters out the 38th story conference room window at Russell Winters Enterprises, demolishing a perfectly good source of obscenely inflated income for the firm, and for Lindsey in particular. Naturally, the firm wanted to know what was up with this guy, and whether he could be used to their advantage.

Lucy had followed him to the Santa Monica Pier where he valiantly took out a nest full of Tanafirroh demons and saved a smart-looking man from a terrible, slow death. She had asked for the time, and then touched his hand in thanks. It should have worked, as it had on dozens of men and women before. Except that vampires' minds cannot be penetrated. It's like the mirror – the thoughts are there, but they create no reflection. Angel, or any vampire for that matter, couldn't be read the way a human could. But what she did notice was his aura: the eggplant-colored ring around his neck that denoted guilt, and around his entire body, the reddish hue of a human soul. She knew enough about vampires to find this odd, so she reported back to Lindsey immediately, and he had thanked her. They'd shaken hands, touched skin. And now, she could read Lindsey.

He was thinking of her right now. His emotions and intentions were coming to her loud and clear, such was the magnitude of his fear. She laughed to herself. He was going to call her again to spy on Angel, but what good could it do? Everyone at the firm already knew he had a soul, and that was the extent of her psychic expertise on those of the bloodsucking persuasion.

Still, she liked to get a jump on things. Her years of trying to touch people for the sake of readings had made her good at skulking about, and her aforementioned lack of tact made it very easy for her to spy on people without scruple, usually just their minds. Occasionally, their persons. Put the two together, and she could lurk behind the bushes with the best of them. She used the local business directory to locate Angel's office, and with it his apartment, and set out with her collection of lock-picking bobby pins and some infrared binoculars, just in case..

For unlike Deanna Everweather, Lucy Lira _was _a voyeur. Voyeurism was her bread and butter, and the juicier the revelation, the better, the more entertaining for her. She was looking forward to finding out how a vampire with a soul might live, might eat without feeding on humans, what he might watch on television, who he might choose to spend his time with. She was looking forward to selling this information to Wolfram & Hart, some good old-fashioned cloak-and-dagger reconnaissance, that would perhaps make up for her inability to read the vampire's mind, and maybe buy her a new Mercedes. But as she used a hairpin to unlatch the front office door of Angel Investigations and crept through the dark to the door at the top of the stairs, she had doubts. How could she be sure that he'd be home, and not out saving the universe?

But she needn't have worried. She could hear his voice as soon as the second door was silently unlocked and opened, and a second voice as well. A female.

She crept down the top two steps, listening harder for something more specific, a word, a sentence, some piece of information she could use. But all she could hear was moaning. So she crept down a bit more, so that she could just see into the sitting room. She nearly lost her balance and fell when she saw.

Angel was nude, half-sitting, half-lying on the sofa. A blonde girl dressed in a kimono was licking chocolate mousse off his stomach, drawing closer and closer to the place where his legs meet each other. Judging by the upright, nearly purple state of things, Angel was _very_ pleased about it. She worked her tongue slowly over his abdomen, and then over his admirable erection, and the moans that escaped increasingly louder from Angel's lips would have indicated to the untrained eye that he was being most eggregiously tortured.

Lucy was quite surprised to find that she disapproved of her own inappropriate prying into the sexual lives of vampires. Even for her, this act of voyeurism was way off the rails. She should walk away – this was clearly an extremely private moment between two souls (she was reasonably sure that the girl was human, as she had a soul, _and _appeared to have a body temperature, heightened though it may have been at this juncture), and there was little to be gained for reconnaissance here.

But she just couldn't tear herself away, and the perverse delight got the better of her. So, Lucy watched the blonde finish her dessert, accompanied by a beautiful, musical groan of release from Angel, then slowly tease her vampire lover back up to full-mast by opening, but not stripping away, the delicate silken Japanese costume. She allowed him to drink in great gulps the sight of her bare, and equally silken skin, and used the soft fabric of her garment to brush lightly against the most swollen parts of him and compound his desire.

Eventually, she slid gracefully to the floor and guided Angel's hands and mouth to the places where she needed them most. Then after Angel brought the girl to writhing fits of supplication involving what looked like baked apples in some sort of syrup, and the kimono was all but ruined, the two of them came unhinged. They tried, panting, to stumble to the bedroom, God knows why, but they only made it as far as the kitchen. And so, with succulent desserts spilled everywhere throughout the front of the apartment and the kimono ripped to shreds, he took her on the kitchen floor, under the exposed light bulb, with Grecian athleticism and marathon endurance. A human being, a man, would have died from exhaustion, and frankly, Lucy could not understand how the blonde girl survived it.

By the time Lucy heard him groan his last and loudest, she had figured out that Angel and the girl had been re-enacting a film called _Le Banquet d'Amélia_. It was a piece that had been released the year before about an RAF pilot and a French prostitute whose shtick, as it were, was to play the part of a Geisha who specialized in food-related sex play. It was all there: the kimono, the mousse, the syrupy dessert with baked fruit. Even the swinging light bulb hanging from the kitchen ceiling smacked of their cinematic re-enactment.

Only the sounds of Angel and the girl beginning to clean up the kitchen, putting on clothes, chatting lightheartedly about what had just transpired, brought her out of her stupor. It was as though she'd been in a trance, watching the action from afar, as though she were having one of her psychic experiences, only in living color. She looked at her watch. She had been crouched on the stairs for three hours, and it was nearly dawn. Slowly, she gathered her senses, stood up and crept back up the stairs.

Except she could hear someone in the office above, someone much less stealthy than herself. Though she knew it was coming, she gave a start and a little jump when the door opened at the top of the stairs, and she found another pair of eyes staring back at her.


	7. Whispers In The Dark

**Whispers In The Dark**

She'd been ignoring Lindsey's pages and calls all night. She knew he'd ask for an update on the Angel/Slayer boinking situation, and she just didn't feel like having to justify her disinclination to watch them get jiggy while she crouched in the bushes with a thermos of coffee and a box of doughnuts. Especially since he still wasn't going to tell her squat.

Since Deanna had no security clearance for entering the file rooms at Wolfram & Hart, she had been forced into occult book shops all over town, where she had encountered crusty old librarian types who had agreed to allow her to borrow their precious texts in exchange for a good hearty look down her cleavage. It was a cheap trick, she knew, but she was desperate to find out more _real news_ about this Angel business.

Her research had led her to find that the Wathric Brethren were good at imitating different families of magick, which she could more or less have figured out. It had also yielded the information she'd been missing about Angel's curse and the happiness clause. Now she understood why Lindsey was so intrigued by the prospect of Angel having sex: _that _must mean perfect happiness, ergo, chaos and murder. And perhaps then, a powerful vampire working for the side of evil when the Apocalypse arrives. This led her to believe that the _change _in the curse brought about by the much-lauded upgrade had to do with that happiness clause. It must be why Lindsey, not-so-coincidentally, was having her follow Angel around on a night when happiness might rob him of his soul.

She was sorry she hadn't been around the see the transformation from Angel to Angelus, but she was glad that she'd spent the time and done her homework. Running smack into the evil twin would not have been fun, had she not known of the consequences.

The sun was just about to peek over the horizon when she slipped into Angel Investigations' dark office. She was aware that what she might be facing was in fact Angelus but she figured that that must be why Lindsey had sent her to watch Angel in the first place. She figured he needed to know whether Angel had turned, and she, Deanna, was his gal Friday. And she wasn't about to give up her chance for a permanent position at Wolfram & Hart just because she might get her throat ripped out. This was a kind of test, she knew. She was no dummy. She had come prepared with a stake, several crosses, some vials of holy water, and for good measure, a blow torch.

She was surprised to find that the outer door was unlocked. Oh well, she figured, Angel and Buffy must have been so hot for each other, they forgot to dot their i's. All the better for creeping in during the wee hours of the morning.

She tiptoed across the periwinkle-bathed rooms, taking care not to click her shoes on the linoleum. Lindsey had told her that Angel's apartment was right below his office, and she knew that vampires had superhuman hearing. So might Slayers, for all she knew. She looked about, and assumed that the door right next to the old freight elevator would lead her downstairs into some sort of corrridor, where she could watch the vampire through a keyhole.

Before she had a chance to learn how wrong her assumption was, she pulled the door open, and her heart nearly skipped a beat. She found herself face-to-face with neither Angel nor the Slayer (which she had been half-expecting), but with a middle-aged hippie, dressed in a Native American-like leather vest and crinkled turquoise skirt. She had thick glasses and almost no lips, and her waist-length bleach-fried hair was tied back in a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck.

Deanna made to cry out, but before any sound could escape, the woman's hands were tight around Deanna's mouth and head.

"Shhhhhhhh!" rasped Lucy Lira. "Do you want to get us both killed?"

She released Deanna from her grip, and gave the younger woman her best exasperated expression. She gestured for her to step back so that she could get out of the stairway, and Deanna obeyed. Lucy softly shut the door, and whispered, "What are you doing here?"

Thinking quickly, Deanna answered, still whispering herself, "I, uh, I work here. With Angel. For Angel. I'm part of his investigative team. So I guess that means I'll be asking the questions around here, missy! What are _you_ doing here?"

Lucy sighed. "You don't work here. You didn't turn on the lights when you came in, you were tiptoeing in here before, and you're still whispering."

"Yeah, well, it's cause I knew you were in here, breaking and entering, being where you're not supposed to be. In my boss' office."

Again, Lucy sighed. Damn kids. "You work for Lindsey McDonald. Your name is De... Dena. Diana? Well, if you give me a few minutes and some peace and quiet, I could come up with it."

Astonished, Deanna's lower jaw went slack. "How... how did y-you..."

"I'm psychic. I touched you and now I can read your mind. Neat, eh? Now, I'm getting _fear_ from you, but I'm not getting why you're here, so you must not be entirely sure either."

"Wait, what? You touched me..."

"If my skin comes in contact with another person's skin, I can read their thoughts from then on. It's a gift, and quite a lucrative one at that. Now let's go back to why you're here."

"Lindsey told me to spy on Angel," Deanna said, half-pouting. "But I saw him and his girlfriend at this restaurant, and it seemed pretty clear what they were going to be doing all night, so I decided to go do some research instead."

"You decided _not _to watch the show, eh? Well, you missed quite a performance. I was riveted, let me tell you."

"They did it? Really?" Deanna squeaked. "And you watched? That's so gross!"

"I invade the darkest corners of people's minds. Believe me, I've seen grosser."

Lucy closed her eyes and concentrated. "Like how you got into Stanford. Oh, Deanna! _Three_ of the stuffed-shirt, paunch-bellied deans? Two of them at the same time?"

Nothing came out of Deanna's gaping mouth for about five seconds, and then, "Oh my God! Stop that!"

"And Georgetown Law School," Lucy taunted, still concentrating. "_Both_ of your admissions interviewers, one of whom was a woman!" She opened her eyes and smiled at Deanna. "Well, I guess we all go through our phases."

"Okay just stop. You've made your point."

"And so have you. You're partly here because you're pissed off at Lindsey," Lucy told her, not asked. "It's okay, dear. He doesn't really warm up to anyone."

Grudgingly, Deanna conceded. "Yes, that's true. He wouldn't tell me anything, left me to figure it out for myself, like he can't trust me or something."

"Figure what out?"

"They made a change to Angel's curse yesterday morning," Deanna explained, not really cognizant of the fact that she was spilling Wolfram & Hart's sinister secrets to a stranger.

Lucy decided to play along. Clearly Deanna figured that Lucy knew everything about Angel already, and a little extra info wouldn't hurt when she went selling her recon to the firm.

"Oh, the curse," Lucy said, nodding with a knowing grin.

"Yeah, the curse of his soul," Deanna laid out for her, matter-of-factly.

A flicker of realization crossed Lucy's face. _So that's why he has a soul!_ she thought. Someone must have punished him for his vampiric misdeeds and cursed him with a conscience! It made perfect sense.

Deanna continued to talk. "In my research, I found out about the happiness clause."

"Oh, I can't believe you didn't know about that already!"

"I know! It's just basic information! Would it really kill Lindsey to let me in the loop a little? I mean, everyone else at the firm knows that if Angel has a moment of pure happiness, he loses his soul and he becomes the bad-ass, puppy-maiming vampire he was before he was cursed. It's not like I'm going to leak some well-kept secret that only Lindsey The Great can know!"

"And you think he's turned evil?"

"Lindsey? No, he's just aggravating."

Lucy, for the third time since meeting Deanna, sighed heavily. "No, Angel. You think he's turned because he's had pure happiness with the girl in the kimono."

"Kimono?"

"Yeah, long story."

"Well maybe, and I think that's what Lindsey needs me to tell him. I think the upgrade has to do with the clause, and if he does or doesn't have a soul could mean big trouble for Lindsey."

Noncommittally, Lucy answered, "Interesting."

Deanna decided to stay and try to discern whether Angel was now Angelus, or whether she was right about the upgrade. She bade goodbye to the mysterious woman whose name she had never learned, and only later wondered what she had been doing there, lurking on the stairs and watching Angel and the Slayer screw their brains out.

And as Lucy walked away from Angel's office in the first light of morning, she knew that she had been wrong to pump the girl for specific information, and even more wrong to leave her there when she could possibly have run into Angelus in a morning-after snit. But, it would all be okay, because Lucy knew that Angel still had his soul. She had seen him achieve happiness with kimono girl at least twice, and the reddish tinge had never gone away from either of them.

And now she was more clear about why Lindsey needed her services. He needed her for the same reason Deanna figured he needed _her. _Lucy was far more efficient, though.

So, Angel was still ensouled, but now the question was: why?

Before she had the chance to ask, her cell phone rang. It was Lindsey.

"Morning Lindsey," she said cheerfully into the phone. "Angel still has his soul. Is there anything else you need to know?"


	8. Trigger

**Trigger**

Meanwhile, back in the office, Deanna crept unwisely down the stairs. She was surprised to find that the stairs led straight into Angel's apartment, and not, in fact, into a hallway as she had anticipated. She was disconcerted by this revelation, but shook off her fear and proceeded down the stairs. She couldn't see Angel or the Slayer, but she could hear their voices, briefly, mostly a lot of giggly lovey-dovey crap. She wondered if that alone was evidence enough that Angel hadn't lost his soul, but then again, she had read that Angelus had been an extraordinarily good pretender in his day.

Then a high-pitched humming sound came into play, and she could hear nothing other than that. She did not understand that the humming came from Angel's private freight elevator, and that Angel and Buffy were coming upstairs to the office. And so, Deanna waited, very quietly.

"Who the _hell_ are you?" an angry, yet somehow bright and chirpy, voice asked. It was Cordelia's normal voice, but to Deanna in her current state of clandestine crouching, it sounded loud enough to be a cannon blast.

Deanna jumped and yelped, without anyone's hand nearby to prevent her, like last time. She looked up the stairs and no less than _four_ people were looking down at her, two of them being Angel and the Slayer. The other two she did not recognize, but understood that they must be Angel's associates, Cordelia and Doyle. None of them looked particularly pleased to see her.

She began to try to stand up, but her pink dress shoe slipped on the smooth concrete landing, and she slid back down again. She silently cursed herself for not wearing sneakers or something more sticky and stealthy.

She began to try to speak, but no words came. She was trying to think on her feet, but it wasn't going so well. She wasn't going to get away with telling these folks she worked for Angel, so she might as well tell them the truth.

"I came to warn you!" she blurted out. Okay, so it wasn't really the truth, but it _could_ have been.

"That's not what she asked," Angel said to her, his voice low and menacing.

Angel, Buffy, Cordelia and Doyle all stared down at the mysterious woman who had managed to be clever enough suddenly to appear in the stairwell to Angel's apartment, yet had not had the foresight to close the door behind her. The silence hung in the air like a black cloud.

She raised her hands in pseudo-surrender, and uttered the phrase, "I'm human, I swear." Her research had told her that ensouled Angel did not harm humans.

"Again, not what she asked," he responded.

"I'm D-Deanna," she said nervously.

"Hi Deanna! I'm Doyle, and this is Angel, Buffy and Cordy. We run a detective agency," Doyle said, in a falsely friendly, sardonic tone. "But I'm guessing you already know that. So, now that we know your name, what is it that _you_ do? You know, besides breaking and entering."

She paused. Should she tell the truth? Did she have any choice?

"I work for Wolfram & Hart," she confessed.

Three of the four at the top of the stairs groaned and left their post at the doorway. Buffy, however, stayed at the doorway and directed an inquiry at Angel. "Wolfgang and Who?"

Deanna took the opportunity to come upstairs and join the party. Angel, Cordelia and Doyle were all sitting down in various places around the office, apparently unimpressed by her revelation. Buffy remained the only one concerned.

"Wolfram & Hart," Angel answered. "They're a law firm."

"An _evil _law firm," Cordelia said emphatically.

"Is there any other kind?" Buffy asked.

"No, literally evil," added Doyle. "They represent demons and vampires and a myriad of other ungodly creatures spit back from hell."

"Okay," Buffy conceded, still the only one standing who wasn't Deanna. "That doesn't explain why she's here." She put both hands on her hips and stared squarely at Deanna, who was still lingering in the doorway to the stairs, clutching her oversized bag full of vampire-repellent weaponry.

"I'll bet it's because of what I did to Russell Winters," Angel said, now standing himself. He strode closer to the center of the room where Buffy stood. "The firm wants to know if I've gotten wind of any _other_ super-creepy tycoon vamps who just happen to be clients of theirs." He steadied his eyes upon Deanna as well.

"Tycoon vamps?" Buffy asked, finally turning her own steely gaze from Deanna's face in order to look at Angel's.

"Yeah, things work a little differently in L.A.," he told her.

Buffy made a face, and then said, "Apparently."

"It's not 'cause of that. The firm has moved on to bigger and better things. Winters was a liability anyway – way too conspicuous." She was just spitballing now, trying to act like she knew the ins-and-outs of the firm when clearly she didn't. Her voice was shaking, even though she was pretty sure that no one in this crowd would hurt her.

"Bigger and better things, eh?" Cordelia asked. "Cryptic much? I bet they didn't even tell you what they're up to." She sat down at her desk and began carelessly to go through a stack of mail.

That stung. "Oh yes they did!" she spat, before she could stop herself. Deanna wanted to add the word _bitch_ to the end of that sentence, but managed to think better of it.

"Whoa," Doyle chuckled. "Struck a nerve, eh?" His triumphant smile made Deanna even angrier than the implication itself.

Deanna tried for a deep breath, but managed only a shallow, ragged one. She tried to sound calm as she explained, "It just so happens that I know _exactly_ what's going on with the upgrade, I've just been sent here to keep an eye on you two." She pointed at Angel and Buffy.

"Upgrade?" Buffy asked Angel. "Did she say upgrade? What's that?"

"I don't know," Angel answered, barely above a whisper.

Deanna suddenly realized her folly. In her haste not to seem like an insignificant lackey, she had slipped and revealed part of the plan. Again, she silently cursed herself.

"So why don't you tell us?" Buffy asked, but it wasn't really a question.

"Why should I? That's classified privileged attorney information." There was no such thing, really, but these people didn't know that, did they?

"I find you skulking around in my house, you imply there's some kind of plan in the works over at the law firm of Damnation and Terror, and now you're going to get all ethical on me? I don't think so." As he spoke, Angel had been moving closer and closer to Deanna, until they were almost touching. Only by a major act of will had Deanna been able to resist backing away from his advance.

With every ounce of courage she could muster, she said, loud enough for only Angel to hear "I'd suggest you take one large step backwards _right now_."

Angel smiled with malice. "Or what?"

"Or this!" She produced a wooden stake out of her bag and held it to his heart.

Angel didn't flinch. For less than one full second, they looked each other in the eye with dark intensity. Then, with flash-quick grace, he knocked the stake out of her hand and took hold of her wrist. He twisted it hard enough to make her entire body turn as she groaned breathlessly in surprise and her bag fell from her shoulder. He pushed her forward over the stairwell, still holding onto her wrist, practically dangling her.

"That was a very bad move, Deanna," Angel said to her. "Now how can I ever trust you again?"

The pain in her arm was intense. Her entire bodyweight hinged on joints awkardly twisted behind her back.

Angel said, "Either you tell me what I want to know, or I let go. Got it?"

She stared down at the steep concrete stairs. Falling down them wouldn't kill her, but it would hurt quite a lot, and one good concussion possibly put her out of the running for a permanent position at the firm. She couldn't risk that.

She nodded in assent.

"Good," Angel said. "Now what's the upgrade?"

"The firm has made a change to the curse, the one that gave you your soul."

He twisted her arm further. Tears came to her eyes. "What kind of change would that be, exactly?" he demanded harshly.

"It's in the clause!" she said, now trying not to weep openly and hating herself for her weakness.

"The clause?"

"Yes, the clause! The 'perfect happiness' clause doesn't work anymore," she practically screamed.

Angel pulled her back upright and let go of her arm. She was incredibly relieved to be back on her own two feet, and pleased to find that her arm hadn't been broken. Feeling suddenly exalted and brave, she smiled at him slyly "But I guess you already figured that out, eh?" She glanced at Buffy and winked.

Nonplussed, Buffy asked her, "How do you know that?" Then she found herself incensed. "Oh my God, were you watching from the stairway the entire time?" She advanced on Deanna with swiftness, but Angel stopped her.

"No, not me. Some lady. She told me."

"What lady?" Angel asked, a little too close for comfort.

"About my height, bleach-blonde, aging flower child. Don't know her name, and come to think of it, she never told me why she was here," Deanna explained.

"So wait a minute," Buffy said. "The happiness clause is voided, and this law firm thinks they're responsible?"

"Well... yeah," Deanna shrugged.

"And you guys call yourself highly educated? The clause wasn't there to begin with. Your firm had nothing whatsoever to do with it."

"Wasn't there to begin with?"

"A witch friend of mine re-cursed him a year and a half ago," Buffy said, arms still crossed authoritatively across her chest. "Clause wasn't in it. So it looks like your lawyer friends wasted some perfectly good upgrading."

Deanna smiled. "I said there was a change, didn't I? It doesn't matter who removed the happiness clause, because now there's a _new_ clause. _Something new_ now will turn our favorite blood-drinking teddy bear back into Angelus." Now it was her turn to fold her arms smugly across her chest.

The other four looked at each other worriedly. For a few moments, they seemed to forget Deanna was in the room.

"That's right heroes," she taunted them softly. "Be afraid. Now it could be anything. The next time Angel steps on a crack in the cement, the next time he brushes his hair or stubs his toe... you could have one hell of a bad-ass vamp on your hands."

They all pretended not to hear, but all internalized what she has said. _It could be anything_. Could it really be as simple as stepping on a crack or brushing his hair? Something now completely unknown could plunge them all back to where they had been two years ago, with Buffy a basket-case and Angel trying to kill her friends (and his own) and bring about the Apocalypse. How should they tread? How careful should they be? It's not like Angel could just stand in one spot in the office without moving for the next twelve hours while the others figured out the new trigger.

Buffy's stomach turned at the thought of having to kill him again, send him to hell and then live in the aftermath. She knew she couldn't do it again – she'd rather just get sucked into hell herself than have to deal with an encore performance from Angelus. Cordelia hated the feeling of wondering if she should be keeping some holy water in her desk just in case her boss went psycho again. And Doyle, he understood all to well the need to suppress the _other_ side of onself, having power that couldn't always be controlled. He was the one person in the room to make eye contact with Angel during this difficult silence.

All of them, Slayer, vampire, half-blood demon and Cordelia, were suddenly petrified by this heretofore unimpressive, but incredibly tedious, woman. Deanna basked in their discomfort for a few moments, and in the fact that she had a little plan up her sleeve. She was fully aware that Angel and his gang would now ask about the upgrade, and upon figuring out that she didn't know, they would try to use her to infiltrate the firm. But she wasn't going to go down like that, and stakes and fire weren't the only things that could harm Angel now.

Angel rounded on her, and demanded, "Now you're going to tell us what change was made. What's the trigger now?"

"That would be mine," she answered, and produced the Reugger pistol from her pocketbook that her father had given her. With a smoothness that surprised even herself, she had the gun aimed straight at Angel. The other three in the room bristled at the sight of it, Angel, however, remained calm.

Again, she cursed herself for her slowness. _Duh,_ Angel's not afraid of mere bullets. At least not for his own life.

Suddenly the gun was aimed at Buffy, the love of Angel's unnaturally long life, the woman with whom he had only recently been able to find happiness. His human face melted into vampire, and he growled at her, at the ready. Cordelia and Doyle, too, were suddenly armed and looked ready to pounce. Buffy looked merely nervous.

"Don't move any closer, Angel, or your girlfriend dies," Deanna said. Her voice was shaking again, but she meant what she said. She had already decided to shoot to kill.

She addressed Buffy. "I know what you're thinking. You could take this gun from me at any moment. Any time you like, 'cause you're the _Slayer_, the chosen. Faster than a speeding bullet!" She paused for dramatic effect. "No wait, that's Superman."

She squeezed off a shot, which struck Buffy somewhere in the chest. All at once, the Slayer was on the floor bleeding, and Deanna was using the ensuing commotion to bolt out the door. She heard the faint sound of Angel crying out, "Stop her!" but neither Doyle nor Cordelia seemed up to the task. They were all crouching around their beloved Buffy, begging her not to die.


	9. Clever Little Buggers

_PLEASE FORGIVE THE LONG ABSENCE, AND THANKS FOR STAYING WITH ME. I DO KNOW WHERE I'M GOING WITH THE STORY, I PROMISE, AND SOMEDAY I'LL GET THERE. I'VE JUST BEEN UNGODLY BUSY LATELY WITH A NEW JOB, AND I'VE NOT HAD AS MUCH TIME TO WRITE. BUT PLEASE DON'T GIVE UP ON ME, AND CONTINUE TO READ AND REVIEW!_

**Clever Little Buggers**

Lucy paid for her lattè, left two dollars in the tip jar and then made her way on foot down the crowded city street. She felt good this morning. After leaving Lindsey speechless over the phone, she'd had a nice leisurely breakfast of fruit and cottage cheese at a local deli, and then strolled to the coffee cart where she went sometimes when she felt like ogling the cute Arab guy who owned it. As she turned the corner into an alleyway, she felt something. A psychic reading was coming over the air from someone she'd recently touched.

Fear, hard and blinding. Loud and clear. Lindsey's lackey, the cutesy slut in the pink shoes, was afraid for her life, even more so than when they'd collided in Angel's office and had their exchange of whispers.

The concept of vengeance was coming over the waves clearly as well, but was she afraid because she was about exact vengeance, or was she afraid of someone else's retribution against _her_? Lucy couldn't tell this much. Deanna must have a thousand thoughts in her head right now, all clouding her judgement and doubtlessly making her even more reckless than before.

But no matter. Her job was not to bail out every upstart who crossed paths with supernatural forces and didn't like it. That was, as far as she could tell, Angel's lot. At least for now.

Lucy was intent in her purpose: to speak to her old friend Peetolothro-Wathric, one of the elders of the Wathric clan. The two of them had crossed paths and/or joined forces more than once, as Pete, as he was called in non-demonic circles, was one of the few prescient brethren of the clan. The Wathric always revere those who can read the the thoughts of others, and within their own ranks, they "promote" all of their psychic comrades as soon as they come of age. A psychic Wathric only comes around once every two or three generations on average, but Pete had been the first in five. The clan had been so desperate for a clairvoyant, they invested invested in him a position of power even before his two-hundredth year. He had been an elder since he was barely 160 years old, and for the last 348 years, he'd been serving his brethren as a faithful, if young, elder.

Lucy had always liked him. His demon visage repulsed her, but his human-like face was rather pleasing. Unlike Randlu-Wathric, who wore a spongy, too-many-doughnuts disguise, Pete's costume was tall and handsome, and spoke with a slight Castilian lilt. Lucy thought this a nice touch. She always looked forward to coming to see him, for a psychic-to-psychic consultation. She had even been known to _invent _reasons to see him, not that she'd ever admit that to herself.

But it was not to be strictly psychic-to-psychic today. She was hoping to get Pete to tell her what the clan had done for Wolfram and Hart. Once Deanna had let slip that the curse upon the vampire had been _changed_ somehow, Lucy had deduced that it must have been the Wathric clan that had done the work. She wasn't a witch herself, but she knew enough about magick to understand that people and demons who can cast spells are a dime a dozen, but not just anyone could _change_ some part of a spell already cast. A spell is linked to the caster, like a marionnette to the puppeteer. Cut one of the lines, and the whole thing falls apart.

Modifying spells was a talent posessed only by the Wathric clan, which made its home on the Western seaboard of the United States, and by a family of ape-like demons whose home was in another dimension, linked to our world through a portal in the Himalayas. In their travels back and forth, they had often been mistaken for the Abominable Snowman. Lucy always found these reports amusing.

Thirty-eighth brick to the right of the drainpipe, twelfth from the bottom. She pressed on it with her right ring-finger and thumb, and a door materialized before her. She stepped through it to find Pete and one of his brethren standing over what looked like an adding machine losing its paper guts, and wringing their hands.

Pete looked up at her. "Ah, Lucy! I knew you'd come!"

Lucy knew that was true. Unfortunately, he was wearing his true face, his demon face, and it was difficult for her to smile at him without a slight furrow.

"Hi Lucy," the other demon said.

"Hello Mark," she said, giving a small wave.

Pete excused himself from Mark and the papery mess, and stepped toward Lucy. As he did, his face changed into human, and Lucy relaxed a bit. He kissed her on the cheek, and ushered her into his office. Stark grey walls with flourescent lighting and furniture that had gone out of style with Nixon.

"So, what brings you here today, Lovely Lucy?" he asked her, shutting the door behind him.

She sat down in one of the hideous chairs. "Do you know of a law firm called Wolfram & Hart?"

"Sure, we just did some work for them a day or so ago," he told her.

"I don't suppose you'd tell me what you did?"

"Randy did it. He gave them the power of Camblo-Wathric."

"The power of what?"

"Camblo was the first of our clan to be able to modify spells and maledictions. He lived about twenty or so generations ago, passed his little talent on to the rest of us. It's been a pretty handy tool, let me tell you."

"And you all just..." she paused for effect, "..._give_ this power to people?"

"If the price is right, yes," Pete said simply, leaning back in his chair.

Lucy's jaw fell open a little. She thought she might like to say something, but she couldn't think of any words other than 'sellout,' so she refrained, not wanting to insult Pete's tribe.

"Well, that's not exactly true," he said. "We can't _give_ them our power, we can just share it with them for year's time. It's ungodly expensive, but Wolfram & Hart is pretty ungodly, even as these things go. They have the power to change spells for a year, and then it fades away."

"And you guys don't have any problem with this evil law firm full of _humans _having your unique power?"

"Not really," he said, shrugging. "We like to think of our powers as benefitting the world as needed, so what's the difference if we use it ourselves or rent it out to someone else?"

"Well, that's a very _progressive_ way of looking at things," Lucy conceded.

Actually, she just flat-out didn't understand it. She wouldn't be able to bear sharing her power with someone, even if she could. She loved lording her psychic abilities over people and having one-up on most of the rest of the world.

A discouragement set in, amid her processing of Pete's information. This meant that all that the Wathric did for the law firm was to give them the power to change Angel's curse, they didn't actually make the change. This meant that Pete probably didn't have the information she was looking for.

She supposed she could try to get into Lindsey's mind, but all she'd gotten from him lately was a cloud of fear and anticipation, and then more fear. Nevertheless, she took a stab.

"Do you know a vampire called Angel?" she asked Pete.

"I know _of_ him, why?"

"You know about him? Why he's unique?"

"Cursed with a soul by gypsies, has a demon-hunting business nearby, masquerading as a private investigation firm," he said, squinting slightly, trying to recall buried information.

"What about the soul. Did you know he could lose it?

"No, that's news to me," Pete said, leaning forward on the desk. "Tell me more."

"Loses the soul if he experiences true happiness."

"What kind of happiness?"

"The only precedent is..." she blushed.

"Oh!" he said, smiling. "Clever little buggers, those gypsies."

"But the problem is that I happen to know he's been, shall we say, _intimate_ with someone quite recently, and he still has his soul."

Pete merely grunted, but Lucy could see the wheels turning.

"I've had it on good authority that Wolfram & Hart used the power of Camblo to change the clause in the curse somehow," she explained, though she knew it was needless. "They're calling it 'the upgrade'."

"I'm sorry, Lucy, but I don't know what the change is," he said, not smiling. In fact he was looking at her rather suspiciously. She knew he was reading her. "I'm trying to suss out why on earth you care so much."

She had actually hoped this wouldn't come up. Dumb, considering that Pete had psychic powers far superior to her own. She stared at her lap as his eyes bore holes in her forehead. She decided to lay all her cards out on the table, as Pete had been so very honest with her. In fact, a good idea occurred to her: she should bring Pete in. Three heads would be better than one.

"I want him for myself," she said.

"Mm-hm."

She wanted to amend her comment. "Well, not him exactly, his power. His evil energy, whatever it is. I have witnessed him in action, and he is a magnificent creature. I think that without a soul, he could be put to much better use."

"You want him to work for you."

"Not me, Pete. Us." Her eyes flashed with anticipation as she waited for her friend's response.

He seemed to be genuinely surprised by this revelation. Apparently, he hadn't bothered to read beyond her initial intentions. He sat back once again in his chair, and stared contemplatively at the ceiling. Lucy waited for what felt like an eternity to hear him say something, anything about the plan.

At long last, he said, "What can I do to help?"

"I've been trying to get a reading on Lindsey McDonald. He's the only lawyer at Wolfram & Hart that I know for sure _knows_ what's going on with the upgrade, and I've touched him, so he can transmit to me. But his mind is all muddled right now with terror and apprehension, I can't get anything more specific."

He reached out his hands, and she took them.

"You remember how to be my conduit?" he asked her. "I don't know this man, so your mind will have to direct my mind..."

"I remember," she said, with a shudder of pleasure. She hoped that he couldn't feel the rush of heat that ran up her body as their hands came together and she anticipated melding minds with him.

Both closed their eyes, and Pete began his familiar chant. His and Lucy's psychic powers complemented each other, and streamlined to determine the intentions of Wolfram & Hart, the exact trigger tha would now cause Angel to lose his soul.

Lucy's eyes opened abruptly and immediately met Pete's gaze. They both smiled wickedly and began to laugh.

"Clever little buggers, those lawyers," Pete cackled.

* * *

Desperate and more frightened than she had ever been, Deanna made a beeline across town to her apartment. She took a false sense of hope in the bright light of day, into which she knew Angel could not follow her.

With trembling hands, she began frantically packing a suitcase. She had to get the hell out of town before Angel found her and drained her dry for killing his lady love, Wolfram & Hart be damned.

"But wait a minute," she said to herself, "we don't know that she's dead. I ran out of there so fast, I didn't even see where she was hit."

She began to pace.

"Plus, Angel can't come into my apartment unless I invite him in," her inner-voice continued. "Great, so all I've got to do is stay in my apartment until I run out of food and die of starvation. Or until Cordelia or Doyle shows up to drag me out into the hall so Angel can bite me. Yep. Good plan, Deanna."

She rolled her eyes at her own stream of consciousness, and sat heavily on the edge of her bed. This wasn't like her. Packing, rationalizing, contemplating forgetting about this job that she had always wanted.

"No, I've got to get it together. I need this job. I need to prove myself. I need to get in the loop. I need to find out what the new trigger is!"

But she knew that, as an intern, she didn't have clearance to get into the firm's secured vaults in order to research the upgrade. So she'd just have to get what she wanted in the best way she knew how.


	10. Vendetta

**Vendetta**

The man in tweed and the man in blue looked at each other skeptically.

A girl had been shot in the chest at a local P.I.'s office, there had been at least three other witnesses, all of whom seemed sketchy, none of whom had seen who had been holding the gun. The cast of characters alone was riveting enough to keep the interest of the uniform, but Detective Klies was growing tired of the games.

There was the tall guy, the P.I. himself, the one that worked with Kate Lockley sometimes on the "weird" cases, but Klies didn't let on that he'd seen the guy before. There was the Irish guy with the sharp tongue, and the distinct smell of whiskey that seemed to follow him. The two men stood defensively on either side of the room, both with their arms folded across their chests, both with disconcertingly steely gazes boring holes into Klies and the uniform. There was the dark-haired girl, currently sulking in a chair in the corner, who hadn't spoken in quite a while. Her voice irritated Klies like nails on a chalkboard, and he hadn't been inclined to ask her more than a few simple questions.

And then there was the blonde. The blonde who had been shot in the chest not three hours ago, only a few inches removed from her heart. She was currently sitting upright on the edge of her hospital bed, unhooked from any monitors or machines, eating macaroni and cheese. She was the most curious of the lot. She'd healed so quickly, it was almost inhuman. Klies had to fight to keep his eyes away from her. She had color in her cheeks, she had a spark in her eyes, and a hearty appetite. Normal people are in so much pain after a major gunshot wound, and the surgery that follows, that they are unconscious on pain pills for days, and they can only eat through a tube.

But in spite of everything this girl had going for her, she seemed to have a tragically terrible memory.

No matter, he was pretty certain that everything this group had told him was a lie anyway. What kind of a name was "Buffy Summers"? It sounded as made up as "Cordelia Chase" and "Angel... just Angel." And what was with the dark air of mystery and non-committal answers about why he wouldn't ride in the ambulance with his "girlfriend" when she was fighting for her life? What did he think he was, a superhero? And this chick was his girlfriend? Right. It was painfully obvious to Klies that "Angel, just Angel" and the dude with the fake Irish accent were the real couple in the mix. Those two had Hollywood Boulevard written all over them.

"You can't even tell me if it was a man or a woman?" he asked the blonde, a little jealous of how much she was enjoying her meal.

"I think we've been down this road before," Buffy answered, tearing a chunk off her dinner roll.

"I'm sorry, I just find it hard to believe that you were almost murdered this morning, and you won't help us figure out who did it."

"_Can't_ help you," Buffy corrected. "Can't. There's a difference. I didn't see the guy, so I can't describe him. Or her. I don't know who it was."

Klies and the uniform exchanged glances again.

The detective sighed heavily. "You're gonna stick with the coffee story?"

"It's the truth. Why mess with it?"

The uniform spoke, going back in his steno pad. "So, you spent the night with your boyfriend, and then this morning, came upstairs into the office for some coffee. When you got to the top of the stairs, someone jumped out from behind the office door and shot you, then ran out of the office before you could see who he was. As he was leaving, these three" – he gestured to Cordelia, Doyle and Angel – "came upon the scene and called 911."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Yes, that's the way it happened. I've told you a hundred times now."

The detective looked at Angel. "And you really can't think of anyone who'd have a vendetta against you, someone who you were trying to track down, maybe? Someone you helped put away who might want revenge?"

"No, I can't," Angel said, darkly.

Having squeezed as much water from this stone as he was going to, Klies announced, "Okay, I don't have any more questions for right now. If you think of anything, here's my card." He handed his business card to Buffy, glanced at everyone in the room, and left without saying goodbye. The uniform waved, and then followed.

A palpable, oppressive silence hung in the air.

Cordelia finally broke it, tentatively. "Can I ask a question without being shushed into a corner again?"

In lieu of an answer, they all looked at her expectantly.

"Why are we protecting this woman?" she asked, standing up and looking directly, angrily, at Angel. "She works for the Law Firm of Death, she's been screwing around with your curse, she broke into your office, she shot Buffy, and now we're not even going to send the cops after her?"

"She's messing with demonic powers, Cordy," Angel said from his throat, malice in his voice. "She's gone beyond where human laws can touch her. In our world, we have our own way of dealing with these things."

"Whoa, now. She's still human," Cordelia reasoned, however loudly. "We can't just sick the Slayer on her, like we can with some icky demon thing! You can't just charge into her _lair_ in the middle of the night and have a duel to the death with a big axe!"

"No, I can't. And I have no intention of doing so. But if she crosses my path again, I won't need an axe," he said, not making eye contact with anyone in the room.

Buffy was looking worried, but Doyle was next to speak. "Angel, man, you can't just go killing humans again. It's not what we do! What's it all for, if you just throw _that_ out the window?"

"Look Doyle, I'm not saying I'm going to relish the feel of her neck snapping between my fingers. I lost my lust for the kill long ago," Angel snapped, his voice rising and his pace increasing. "But she's part of something bigger. This law firm is not going away. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to take them down, and if they fuck with me again, I will. And Deanna might as well be at the top of the list."

"Angel, what are you saying?" Buffy asked, practically a whimper.

"She almost killed you, Buffy. She knows you, she knows what you mean to me, and they will come after you again. Next time, there may not be an _almost_."

There were tears in Buffy's eyes now. She was moved by the sentiment, and at the same time, was terrified by what he was saying. "That doesn't mean..."

"Excuse me," he said, sweeping out of the room as though a great force had sucked him out.

Doyle threw up his hands and began to pace. "I've never seen him like this."

"That's because you're new to the whole Buffy/Angel game," Cordelia explained, feigning exhaustion. "Welcome to the pain and bleeding melodrama."

"Excuse me?" Buffy piped up. "I'm sitting right here. You could at least have the decency to say things like that behind my back."

"Well, it's true," Cordy said, with finality. "You know that neither one of you can think exactly straight when the other is around. You both go all puppy-dog, and then you get loopy, and then you get revengey. Remember when you burnt down that church because Spike borrowed Angel for a ritual?"

"You burnt down a church?" Doyle asked, not able to hide the hint of awe in his voice.

"A small one," Buffy said, smiling uncomfortably. "And disused."

"Whatever," Cordelia retorted, dismissing her. "Think about what you were feeling then, and multiply it by a hundred years of _mea culpas_ for past sins. Not only do you have to save your honey, but you've got to come out in force and make up for all the little children you killed in their sleep."

Buffy thought about what Cordelia was saying. For a change, Cordy made some sense.


	11. Mystical Mickey

_PLEASE FORGIVE THE GRATUITOUS LASCIVIOUSNESS OF THIS SCENE. GIVEN WHAT WE KNOW OF DEANNA, I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE PERFECTLY IN KEEPING!_

_BEFORE READING, I'D LIKE YOU ALL TO TAKE NOTE: A) WHEN I BEGAN THIS STORY, I HAD NO IDEA THAT IT WOULD BE SO MUCH ABOUT DEANNA! SHE WAS MEANT TO BE A PERIPHERAL CHARACTER, BUT LIKE HER OR NOT, THERE SHE IS. B) I AM AWARE THAT I MAKE HER ALTERNATINGLY SMART AND IDIOTIC AS IT SUITS ME AS A WRITER, AND I'VE DECIDED THAT JUST THIS ONCE, I'M OKAY WITH THAT._

_**LINDSEY FANS, BE FOREWARNED**. THERE IS SOME HEAVY LINDSEY ACTION IN THIS SECTION, AND CHANCES ARE, YOU'LL REACT VERY STRONGLY. I DON'T KNOW IF IT WILL BE A POSITIVE OR A NEGATIVE REACTION... I'M KIND OF AFRAID TO FIND OUT! BUT DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU._

**Mystical Mickey**

Knowing that Angel might possibly be after her had not made the next day easy. It had spent all of her courage just to leave the house in the morning. But the firm hadn't taken her on because she was a shrinking violet. She was determined to get the truth out of Lindsey, prove her mettle as an evil genius, or whatever it was that Wolfram & Hart wanted from her, and get herself in the loop. Once she did that, perhaps she could work independently of Lindsey, beat him to the punch and bring Angel over to the dark side herself, thus surely securing her fate with the firm.

All it had taken was one lunchtime in the mailroom lounge. She had gone in there in disguise, posing as the new girl, hoping that some of the demony twinkies would let some information slip about underworld apothecaries or mystical healers who weren't necessarily in the business of healing. In the course of a conversation initiated by her, Deanna and a female Edrev Beast (also a new employee in the mailroom) named Moira began talking about their respective love lives.

Deanna made up a sob story about a guy who ran off with some Barbie doll and drained her savings account. It was good for the sympathy vote, and a story like that got other women talking. Indeed, Moira told her how Edrev Beasts cannot use the barrier method of birth control because all of their bodily fluids are made of an acid that melts any man-made material. Moira had found a receipt for Anita's Potions, and that's how she'd known that her ex had been cheating, using a mystical prophylactic.

And that's how Deanna first heard about Anita, a witch who owned a demon brothel in the Hills, and had an extremely lucrative side-business of mixing love potions. Deanna didn't exactly have a salary worthy of an attorney at Wolfram and Hart at the moment, but she figured it would be worth it. She needed something to make Lindsey talk, and Anita had, as she put it, "just the thing."

It was an aphrodisiac, mixed with a mystical relaxant that reacts with endorphins to create a powerful truth-telling serum. It had been created especially as a fantasy de-inhibitor, designed to make men tell their darkest, nastiest desires while sexually aroused. Anita had explained that it was the only known way of mixing a truth potion. The truth is not objective, therefore it can only be manifested, even mystically, within the body of the beholder, and must mix with his or her own body chemicals. Deanna had listened politely, but hadn't really needed to know; she just wanted to get the hell out of there with the potion.

Deanna balanced two plastic containers of noodles and two styrofoam cups atop a thick file, and freed one hand to ring the bell. She waited apprehensively outside Lindsey's stylish apartment, the potion swishing around in a cup filled mostly with ice and Dr. Pepper. She desperately hoped he wouldn't notice the very slight green tinge through the translucent lid. Just to be safe, she had ordered a lemonade for herself, so there would be no chance of mixing the drinks up.

Earlier in the day, much to her amazing luck, Holland Manners had handed her a file and had asked her to peruse it, as he was going to put her in charge of it. He told her it wasn't much, but it _was_ a mystical case, so she should feel fortunate. Indeed she did. She called Lindsey immediately and told him, asking if they could get together later to talk it over so she could have his support, and he had agreed. Then she asked, "Would you rather have Greek or Thai? I'm delivering."

She had chosen her outfit carefully. She had seduced her share of suits, but if she was going to try to trick an innately suspicious (and by the way, intelligent) guy who didn't like her very much into bed, she was going to need some heavy artillery on her side, in addition to the aphrodisiac in the potion. But she didn't want to go overboard, so she had put on her tightest, lowest-slung jeans to show off her flat tummy below a black top with a lacy v-neck. For good measure, she'd thrown on a pendant that drew attention to her considerable, but not overdone, cleavage, and put her hair up in a falling-down bun. Her underwear was, of course, a matched set, but she wore flat shoes. In heels, she'd be taller than Lindsey, and she didn't want anything that could possibly threaten him, turn him off, or make it seem like she had the upper hand.

The door opened in front of her. "Hi," she said. "I come bearing Drunken Noodles and Pad-Thai with extra bean sprouts."

"Good," he said, smiling slightly. "I'm starved."

She was more acutely aware than ever of his dislike of her, and she still got a cold-shoulder vibe from him. But over the last day or so, she had stopped asking questions about his most sensitive case, and he had softened a bit. Tonight she was here to discuss something completely new, or so he thought, and he seemed a bit more relaxed.

"Do you mind if we eat right here? My dining room table is loaded down with fallout from Russell Winters," he said to her, as he sat down on one of the bar stools and fished in the plastic bag for some chopsticks.

"No, that's fine," Deanna replied. She sat down beside him and took the lid off her noodles. He handed her a set of chopsticks, and they ate for the first few minutes in silence. She tried to entice him to look at her, to notice her plunging neckline, her artfully-framed lips, the lacy thong peeking out the back of her jeans. He glanced at her once, and smiled the very slight smile to which he'd treated her a moment ago, and then went back to his food.

Mentally, she willed him to take a drink of his Dr. Pepper. She had gotten him the extra- spicy Pad Thai, even though he'd only asked for medium. She wanted to ensure that he drank all of the soft drink, and with it the potion, because all of the magical liquid needed to be consumed in order for it to work properly. No other ways of getting him to drink the potion had occurred to her, so she'd gone with the fairly obvious idea of slipping him a mystical mickey, as it were. She took a long, noisy drink of her lemonade, hoping to urge him on through suggestion.

Finally, he said, "Whoa, their _medium_ is surprisingly spicy," and picked up his own styrofoam cup and began to swig thirstily. He downed about a third of the drink, then he reached for the file she'd brought and began to sift through it.

She relaxed a bit. The plan was starting to work. The next step was to wait for the aphrodisiac to kick in.

"Oh okay," he mused. "Holland's decided to put you on the Rogg case."

"Yeah, I guess it's something about their spawn?"

"Young Rogg brains have a mystical element that works well in mind-control potions," he explained. "We don't use potions much, but when we do, we always have to go to Madame Anita for them, and the firm is trying to build up its own apothecary chest, if you will." He took another long drink of Dr. Pepper.

Her relaxation vanished. Deanna bristled and her hair stood on end at the mention of Anita. That meant that Lindsey knew who she was and what she did.

She tried not to show her discomfort. "So I'm in charge of getting the eggs?"

"Yeah, the payment has already been made to the Senegalese government. What you'll be dealing with is the customs officials, threatening them into passing the crates through without inspection, seeing to it that they're handled carefully, et cetera. Should be a cinch for someone like you."

Deanna saw an opening, and grasped at it. Most of the Dr. Pepper had been drained, so she leaned forward toward him, resting her chin in her hand and giving him a better view of what was lurking in the v-neck of her black blouse.

With a wry smile, she asked, "Someone like me?"

He smiled back. Actually, he gave her his signature smirk. "Yeah, you know, manipulative." As he said that, he looked quite obviously at her cleavage, and smiled again.

_Here we go,_ she thought. She was nervous, but didn't flinch. "You think I'm manipulative? Why Mr. McDonald, how could you say such a thing?"

Again, he drank in her cleavage not-so-subtly, and neither of their tense smiles changed a lick.

She glanced down herself, making awfully sure it wasn't just a noodle caught on her v-neck that he had been staring at. All things seemed to be in order, and she asked, "Like what you see?"

"I do," he said, the smile unwavering. Resting his elbow on the barstool, he reached across and gently began to brush two fingers against the soft, exposed part of her breast. He moved his fingers lazily back and forth. Without looking her in the eye, he added, "I also know how you got into law school, and that you're playing me for something. I don't know what yet, but believe me when I say I'll find out."

"Yes, you probably will," she answered, allowing him to touch her, and sort of relishing in it. In return, she reached across and began to rub the inside of his thigh.

He let out a small moan. "You put something in my drink, didn't you?"

"Mmm-hmm," she answered in a sexy singsong tone. "How'd you know?"

Finally his eyes tore away from her cleavage, but his fingers did not stop caressing her. He smiled evilly, and said, "Because five minutes ago, I was thinking about what trailer trash you are, and now all I can think about is fucking you. I don't get hot for cheap, and you must have known that."

She swallowed the raw anger that she felt, and asked, "So you've been slipped a potion. You're under a spell. Now that you know that, does that mean you're going to turn it down?"

"Hell no," he said, putting his caressing hand fully around the breast. He squeezed, and Deanna made her move.

She moved toward him and settled between his legs, then leaned in for a hard kiss. As he pulled at her lips hungrily, his hands slid down and grasped tight at her behind. She sighed at the sensation, and felt the first stirrings below Lindsey's belt.

Arousal was setting in, at least on his end, and she decided to test the potion.

"What do you want to do to me?" she asked him, planting kisses along his neck behind his ear.

"I want to peel those jeans off you," he told her huskily, unabashedly. "Maybe tear them."

The "truth" potion was working. She moved around to the front, unbuttoning his expensive dress shirt, and planting new kisses along his collarbone and chest. She sighed, "Mmm, and what next?"

"I'd want you to lie down..."

"Yeah?"

"And I'd lick whiskey off your thighs."

She sighed again, prentending to adore what he was saying. Her eyes flashed at his as she undid the last of his shirt buttons. The bulge behind his Armani zipper had grown to tent-shape, and his breathing was now labored.

She pulled at his belt buckle and as she undid it, she asked, "But if there was no whiskey, how would you feel then?"

"I'd feel disappointed," he said, almost at a whisper now. "Because I want to touch you but I don't want to taste you."

"Why not?" she asked, unbuttoning the pants.

"Because youre dirty," he answered, closing his eyes as she reached inside and stroked his cock.

She brought her mouth very close to his ear, and whispered, "Does that make you hate yourself because you want me so bad?"

"No, it just makes me want to bend you over the bar," he sighed, straining for breath as her fingers slid over his swollen member. He swallowed hard, "And show you what _dirty_ really is."

She slid down to her knees, and let her tongue snake out and lick him gently. He shuddered. "Does it make you hate _me_?" she asked, just before taking a second, longer lick.

He drew in a sharp breath, answering, "I already hated you. I only want you because you gave me a potion, and tomorrow after I've sullied myself by letting you touch me, I'm going to hate you even more."

She engulfed him in her mouth. She slid her lips back and forth a few times, letting herself moan in satisfaction, and then said, "Tell me more about hate, Lindsey."

"Hate lives inside me every day," he moaned, his words completely clashing with what he was feeling, his hardness buried in her mouth, being stroked by something warm and wet. "It practically consumes me."

"Mmm," she said, moaning in response.

"It's why I signed my soul away to work for the evil law firm," he continued. "It's why I spend so much time toadying after Holland Manners' approval, because I hate my father for what a fucking pushover he was. Someone has to be the one to guide me, someone strong."

Deanna's tongue began working overtime, and in spite of his disturbing words, she could feel the pleasure in him taking hold, taking over. She always took great pride and joy in the release, the power she had, knowing that she had full control, if only for a few moments, of the man's emotions, physical sensations and even some of his thoughts. She craved his explosion now, wanted it almost as badly as he did, but she only had one shot to find out what she wanted to know, so she broached the subject of Angel. Reluctantly, she pulled her mouth away, and stroked with one slick hand. He looked a bit disappointed, but he didn't complain.

"And what of Angel?" asked Deanna. "Tell me about him."

"Hate him too," he answered, teeth clenched either in rage or in pleasure. "So much power, so much potential for corruption... and yet we just chase him around like maniacs hoping he'll just randomly go dark and join up."

She felt his body clench. Time for the _coup de grâce_, time to ask the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Never stopping her expert stroking, she asked, whispering cautiously, "What could make him go dark now, Lindsey? What's the upgrade done?" She went back to working him with her mouth, now fairly certain that the deal was sewn up and she could now allow him to have his relief.

But there was a pause that was far too long. For a lengthy, agonizing moment, she was sure that Lindsey was on to her, and had been putting on a show for her all along. But when she looked up at his face, she could see that he was simply lost in his pleasure. She slowed her lips' strokes to give him time to give her the info before the moment arrived.

He grabbed onto the barstool's arms, and his knuckles went immediately white. At long, long last he closed his eyes and said absently, "An act of true valor. A deed of pure, selfless bravery will cost him his soul."

With that, Lindsey gasped sharply, then moaned long and deep, as he lost control and unleashed into Deanna's mouth. The implications of this revelation were hitting her even as she was swallowing: Angel's trigger is a _true act of valor_.

Well, it won't be long now; isn't he doing that sort of thing every day? Isn't that, like, why he exists these days?

She must have been lost in thought, because the next thing she knew, she was being pushed onto her back. Not hard, but enough to wake her from whatever stupor she was in. Lindsey was standing over her, buckling his belt.

"Hunh?" she asked, looking up at him.

"Get the hell out," he growled at her.

Now it was her turn to smirk. "What? Like you're the first man who ever let something slip in a moment of... crisis?"

"You bitch! You came in to my own home and poisoned me!" he screamed. His body was shaking, his face purple with anger.

"So you were under the influence of a potion – so what? That was just to speed up the process, because I don't happen to have all night. In a while, I would have had you singing on-key anyway."

He dragged her to her feet and to the door. His face was still purple, and his fingers were digging into her arms like daggers. For the first time since meeting him, she had some real physical fear of him. He was like a man possessed. But then, weren't they all, just afterwards?

He tossed her out into the hall, and she hit the wall opposite. She was too rattled to move, and so she watched stunned as he went back into the apartment to retrieve her purse. He threw it at her, and slammed the door. After he did so, she could hear glass breaking inside the apartment and, she was pretty sure, at least one sconce being ripped out of the wall.

She took a strange kind of pleasure in hearing his rage. No longer was she on the inside and afraid of catching a wine bottle to the head, and having riled him up so effectively felt like a nice, cozy power trip for Deanna. She smiled and walked down the hall toward the elevator.

So, she thought as the doors opened in front of her, the mighty Angelus is just an act of valor away. She wondered what sort of innocent lamb Angel would have to save from the gaping maw of death to bring him out.


End file.
